Some species are toxic and can secrete poison from their bodies as protection against predators or infraspecific competition.

Although they are more active at night, they may be found on cool days under moist leaf litter, logs, or rocks near water bodies.

[2] The vomerine teeth, which are teeth only located on the upper jaw and in the front part of the mouth, are arranged essentially transversely, not parallel to the maxillary tooth row, which are the other teeth formed along the top jawbone; in mature metamorphosed individuals the dorsal premaxillary fontanelle, a pair of small cranial bones at the very tip of the upper jaw in many animals, is nearly or completely obliterated and the maxillae are not reduced (Tihen, 1969).

[3] Adults tend to live in burrows and only return to waterbodies or streams to breed in early Spring.

Courtship occurs in water; males "dance," nudging the females then deposit numerous spermatophores.

In 2006, a large study of amphibian systematics (Frost et al., Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 297 (2006) placed Dicamptodon back within Ambystomatidae, based on cladistic analysis.